There’s a reason we remember 987-654-3210 better than 9876543210. It’s called chunking, a mental shortcut that helps free up working memory by grouping information into manageable bits.
The same logic applies to tasks. A broad to-do like ‘Launch new feature’ may make sense in your head, but unless it’s broken into subtasks, your team starts with no clear direction.
In this blog post, we’ll explore how to generate subtasks from a task title with ClickUp.
How to Generate Subtasks from Task Title Automatically
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhy Breaking Tasks into Subtasks Matters
Big, vague tasks can feel overwhelming, hard to start, and even harder to delegate. That’s where subtasks come in.
Here’s why breaking tasks into subtasks makes a real difference:
- Clarifies scope: Turns a high-level goal into manageable, actionable steps
- Improves accountability: Makes it easy to assign specific parts of a project to the right people
- Simplifies tracking: Helps you track tasks, visualize progress at a glance, and spot bottlenecks early
- Reduces cognitive load: Keeps you from juggling too many abstract ideas at once
- Enhances collaboration: Enables multiple team members to work simultaneously with clear responsibilities
- Supports time management: Helps estimate workloads and allocate time more effectively
🧠 Fun Fact: According to cognitive science research, people naturally decompose complex goals into smaller subtasks to reduce the mental burden of planning while still achieving high performance.
Summarize this article for me pleaseChallenges with Manual Subtask Creation
Manually breaking down every task into categories can feel like a task in itself. Here are some challenges you might face:
- Takes up valuable time: Requires you to break down similar tasks repeatedly
- Lacks consistency: Leads to varied structures across projects and team members
- Increases risk of error: Makes it easier to miss critical steps or forget dependencies
- Disrupts workflow momentum: Forces context switching when you’re ready to execute, not plan
- Limits scalability: Makes it more challenging to replicate processes as your team or project volume grows
- Blocks automation potential: Keeps you from taking advantage of smarter tools that could handle it for you
💡 Pro Tip: Using mind maps or diagrams is a great way to break down your tasks into manageable subtasks. Start by visually anchoring your main task in the center and branch out to major components or milestones. Start off easily with ClickUp Mind Maps!
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow to Automatically Generate Subtasks From the Task Title
ClickUp is the world’s first Converged AI Workspace that combines project management, documents, and team communication, all in one platform—accelerated by next-generation AI automation and search.
Its core feature, ClickUp Tasks, lets you break down work into manageable subtasks.
🧠 Fun Fact: In 2025, ClickUp’s users created over 3.6 billion tasks! 🤯
Each task serves as a container for everything that needs to be done, and includes owners, deadlines, attachments, discussions, and Subtasks in ClickUp. This checklist provides structure, ownership, and visibility to every phase of your work, particularly when handling recurring workflows.
And no, you don’t need to manually turn every task into a mini-project. ClickUp Brain, the powerful Contextual AI assistant, can help.
Here’s the step-by-step process on how to generate subtasks from tasks within this task management software:
Step #1: Use ClickUp Brain to suggest subtasks from a title
As the world’s most complete and context-aware work AI, ClickUp Brain understands context from your ClickUp workspace, analyzes your task title or description, and instantly suggests relevant subtasks. It helps you organize work, reduce oversights, and keep momentum high without missing a beat.
Here’s how to use Brain for automatic subtask creation:
- Click + New in the Home space and click Task, and give it a clear, action-focused title, like ‘Product Launch Kickoff Meeting’
- After this, click the Create Task button
- Open the task and scroll down to the subtasks section
- Select Suggest subtasks
- Edit or accept the suggestions. Add, remove, or tweak subtasks as needed, and you’re done
- Once your subtasks have been created, set fields like assignee, priority, due date, and other ClickUp Custom Fields as needed. You can use AI to populate AI Fields and help write the task description.
Add dependencies for subtasks that need to be completed in a particular order - Try out different ClickUp Views (List View, Board, Timeline, or Gantt) to see your subtasks the way it makes sense
- Stay on top of priorities, deadlines, and blockers by building a custom task dashboard. ClickUp Dashboards lets you add cards like task status, workload by assignee, burndown charts, or completed subtasks
🚀 ClickUp Advantage: Want the benefits of AI without opening yet another tab?
ClickUp Brain MAX is your AI companion app that unifies search, automation, and context across all your work apps, so you can find what you need, generate updates, or automate tasks right from your desktop.
You can also:
- Dictate tasks, notes, and actions using voice-first input via ClickUp Talk to Text for hands-free productivity
- Choose the right AI model for every task with built-in access to ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek (goodbye AI Sprawl!)
- Automate follow-ups and standups by generating tasks, summaries, or project updates
Step #2: Organize subtasks with custom statuses and dependencies
Once you’ve laid out your subtasks, it’s time to bring some order to them.
With ClickUp Custom Statuses, you can assign specific progress stages to each subtask so everyone knows exactly where things stand. Use ClickUp Dependencies to control the flow, ensuring that one step doesn’t start until another is completed.
- Open the main task that contains your subtasks
- Click on the subtask you want to update. This will open its individual subtask view
- Click on the Status & Type dropdown to view available statuses like To Do, In Progress, or Complete
- Choose the appropriate status for the subtask
- Repeat the process for the remaining Subtasks in ClickUp as needed
Customize statuses for your List
- Go to your List settings and click the Statuses button
- To edit an existing status, click the ellipses or three dots next to it
- To add a new one, click the + Add Status button and give the status a name
Add dependencies
- Open the subtask you want to link
- In the right sidebar, click the + icon or go to the Blocking or Waiting On tab
- Choose the relationship type: Blocking (this task must be done first) or Waiting On (this task depends on another)
- Search for and select the related task or subtask
As your projects grow, so do the moving parts. ClickUp’s Project Hierarchy, from Workspace to Folder, List, Task, Subtask, and Checklist, helps with visual task management.
ClickUp Task Checklists enable you to track smaller tasks within a task. You can nest checklist items, assign them to teammates, drag and drop to reorder, and even use checklist templates to save time on recurring workflows.
📮 ClickUp Insight: 64% of employees occasionally or frequently work outside their scheduled hours, with 24% logging extra hours most days! That’s not flexibility—that’s never-ending work. 😵💫
ClickUp Tasks help you break big goals into smaller, manageable steps, so you always know what to tackle next—without the overwhelm. Just ask ClickUp’s AI to generate subtasks, add checklists, and map dependencies to stay organized and in control. Meanwhile, ClickUp Automations streamline routine work by handling updates, assignments, and reminders—so you can spend less time on busy work and more time on what matters. 🚀
💫 Real Results: Pigment improved team communication efficiency by 20% with ClickUp—keeping teams better connected and aligned.
Step #3: Create task templates
Task templates in ClickUp are reusable blueprints that save your task’s structure, including subtasks, checklists, Custom Fields, assignees, and more. They’re ideal for repeatable workflows, such as onboarding, blog post creation, sprint planning, or QA checklists.
Follow these steps to set up a template you can reuse across projects:
- Create a task with all the details you want to reuse
- Click the … menu on the task and select Save as Template
- Name your template and choose what to include (subtasks, assignees, priority flags, and more)
- Next time you need it, click Templates when creating a new task and select your saved template
And if you don’t want to build a task list template from scratch, you can use the ClickUp Task Management Template.
It gives you a ready-to-use starting point with pre-built default views and Lists to organize action items, ideas, and backlog tasks in one place. Here’s how this task management template helps you:
- Visualize work across multiple layouts like List, Board, and Calendar
- Assign tasks efficiently using workload-based views
- Standardize details with built-in Custom Fields (like deadlines, priorities, or file links)
🧠 Fun Fact: According to neuroscience, complex behavior change requires both motivation (the will) and cognitive skills (the way). When you generate subtasks, you’re helping your brain by lowering the cognitive load.
Need more helpful tips on tracking and managing tasks? Here’s a quick video explainer for you!
Step #4: Trigger subtasks with automation
Once your task templates are ready, why not let ClickUp automatically add them?
With ClickUp Automations, you can trigger subtasks as soon as a task is created, moved to a specific list, or contains specific keywords in its title.
📌 For example, if a task title includes ‘Onboarding,’ Automations can instantly apply your onboarding template to the task with all subtasks, due dates, and assignees. Even if your task titles vary, such as ‘New hire: Jamie’ or ‘Sprint QA – July,’ it can detect keywords (based on your rules) and auto-apply the right template with all predefined subtasks in place.
Here’s how to set up AI workflow automation in ClickUp:
- Open your List or Space, click the Automate button at the top
- Click Create Automation
- Set your trigger:
- Pick a trigger like ‘When task is created,’ ‘When status changes,’ or ‘When Custom Field changes’
- Choose the action by selecting Create a subtask. Enter the subtasks you want to auto-insert (you can add multiple at once)
- You can also use Apply a template to apply a task template to the task that triggered the Automation
- Give it a name (e.g., ‘Auto-subtasks for Campaigns’) and click Create
🚀 ClickUp Advantage: You can also take task automation to the next level with ClickUp AI Agents. These AI tools make decisions based on real-time updates to your workspace and your specific instructions. You can start instantly with prebuilt agents or create your own custom agents using a no-code builder.
Summarize this article for me pleaseReal Use Cases for Auto-Generated Subtasks
Now that you know how to generate subtasks using Automations, let’s explore some specific, real-world scenarios where it’s useful:
1. Client onboarding
Every new client requires a reliable and repeatable process, but the steps can vary slightly based on the service type or tier. Here are the suggested subtasks:
- Send a welcome email and kickoff resources
- Schedule onboarding call
- Set up client workspace, tools, or logins
- Share onboarding checklist or docs
- Assign an internal point of contact
📖 Also Read: Free Project Communication Plan Templates
2. Content marketing
Producing content involves multiple stages, and brainstorming is only the beginning. Here are some examples of subtasks for content marketing professionals:
- Outline draft
- Write the initial copy
- Review and edit content
- Design featured image or visuals
- Upload and schedule a post
🔍 Did You Know? Missing a deadline, no matter how small the delay, can make work look worse, even if there’s no quality change. People subconsciously associate lateness with lower competence and reliability. Creating subtasks can help prevent this by making progress (and bottlenecks) visible before it’s too late.
3. Product development
From feature requests to bug fixes, product work follows a natural lifecycle. Here are some subtask examples:
- Analyze and define requirements
- Create wireframes or UI mockups
- Develop the feature or fix
- Conduct QA and usability testing
- Deploy and update documentation
🔍 Did You Know? Intrusive notifications (like flashing alerts or audio pings) do hijack your task focus, especially in high-stress environments. But here’s the twist: people respond more slowly when they’re already handling an audio task, like a call, than when they’re reading or watching. That’s why designing interruption-friendly systems matters.
4. Support tickets and technical issues
Support teams thrive on speed and consistency. With auto-generated subtasks, you can ensure that every issue, big or small, receives the right triage and troubleshooting steps every time. Here are some examples:
- Acknowledge and tag the request
- Reproduce the issue internally
- Check for existing fixes or patches
- Escalate to the right team (if needed)
- Update the customer with some resolution steps
🧠 Fun Fact: You’re more likely to start with the easiest task, even if it’s not the smartest move. This is called the ‘smaller tasks trap.’ Our brains love quick wins, so we gravitate toward smaller, less demanding to-dos. However, here’s the catch: individuals who rely less on rational thinking tend to fall for this trap more frequently, ultimately harming their overall productivity in the long run.
📮 ClickUp Insight: 48% of our survey respondents say finishing 10 small tasks is more satisfying than making progress on one big one.
That dopamine hit? It feels real (almost). Chasing micro-wins all day seems productive on the surface, but it’s really procrastination in disguise.
Working with intention is the antidote here. Let ClickUp’s Calendar automatically schedule protected blocks for deep work, while still leaving space for quick wins. You can configure Automations to auto-sort tasks into preferred categories. For example, “10x tasks” for your high-impact projects, plus “daily wins” or “weekly wins” for those essential or admin tasks that keep work moving forward.
Summarize this article for me pleaseBest Practices for Structuring Auto-Generated Subtasks
Here are some highly effective best practices to manage multiple projects and make your auto-generated subtasks genuinely useful, scalable, and ready for execution.
- Mirror real workflows: Instead of listing random steps, base your subtask structure on how work flows across teams, tools, or approval stages
📌 Example: For a blog post task, subtasks should match your handoff rhythm: Write draft → Review draft → Add visuals → Publish, unlike a generic ‘Write → Edit → Done’ workflow
- Use clear, action-oriented labels: Avoid vague names like ‘Review’ or ‘Check.’ Subtask titles should sound like instructions, something someone could start working on immediately
📌 Example: ‘Review draft for accuracy’ instead of just ‘Review’
- Assign time windows: Instead of assigning every subtask the same deadline, space them out based on your process timeline
📌 Example: Your design team working on a new feature rollout can break down subtasks based on how work progresses. So, wireframes get Monday, high-fidelity mockups are due on Wednesday, and team feedback and revisions are expected on Friday
- Map subtasks to roles, not individuals: Assign subtasks based on job function (writer, designer, QA lead) rather than assigning tasks to team members in templates. This makes your templates scalable across projects and teams
📌 Example: ‘Assign to content writer’ instead of ‘Assign to Zac.’ Your automation can later match it to the right person by role
- Keep subtasks minimal: Too many tiny subtasks = noise. Too few = confusion. Strike a balance by grouping related micro-tasks into checklists within subtasks, and saving subtasks for distinct stages or owners
📌 Example: Have a subtask called ‘Prepare for launch’ and include checklist items like ‘Confirm messaging,’ ‘Verify assets,’ and ‘Check URLs’
Summarize this article for me pleaseFrom One Title to a Full Workflow with ClickUp
The first ten minutes of any task often determine how smoothly the rest of it goes. However, when you’re juggling multiple projects or managing a team, it becomes repetitive labor.
ClickUp’s powerful task hierarchy can help here. Structure your projects from the top down, so you can map exactly how work gets done across teams, tools, and timelines in the same view. Then, let ClickUp Brain take over. It can instantly break complex tasks into subtasks, suggest timeframes, and even generate action plans. Then, you can add or delete tasks as needed.
Pair that with ClickUp Automations to trigger the right actions at just the right moments, and you’ve got a system that expands with you.
So, what are you waiting for? Sign up to ClickUp for free today! ✅
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